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umbracofreelancer
Rates and engagement

Can I hire an Umbraco developer for just a few days?

The short answer

Yes. Plenty of my work is short: a single day at £500, a few days to clear a backlog, or a week to cover a developer who has left or gone on leave. There is no minimum project size and no setup fee. Short engagements suit well-defined jobs: a code or infrastructure review, a stubborn bug, a performance problem, a small feature your team has not had time to build. Because I have worked on more than 200 Umbraco sites since 2011, I get productive in an unfamiliar codebase quickly, which is the thing that usually makes short engagements uneconomic with a generalist contractor.

Short engagements are normal here

Some freelancers only want six-month contracts. I am the opposite: a large share of my diary is one-day to one-week bookings, at the same flat £500 day rate as everything else. You can see how that compares with retainers on the pricing page.

What fits in a few days

More than you might expect, provided the job is defined. Typical short bookings include a health check on a site you have inherited, fixing a specific bug that has resisted your team, a performance investigation, a security review before a launch, building one well-scoped feature, or pairing with your developers to unblock an upgrade. A day of consultancy at the start of a project is often the cheapest insurance you can buy, because architecture mistakes cost weeks later.

Why short works with a specialist

The economics of a short engagement depend entirely on ramp-up time. A generalist contractor might spend their first two days learning how Umbraco does things, which makes a three-day booking pointless. I have been building Umbraco sites since 2011, from version 4 through to 17, so the ramp-up on a typical site is measured in hours. You pay for output, not orientation.

How booking works

Tell me what you need and when. I will tell you honestly whether it fits the time you have in mind; if it does not, I will say so before you commit rather than after. Contracts are signed digitally and I reply to enquiries within one working day, usually the same day. If the few days go well and you want ongoing cover, moving onto a monthly retainer is simple.

Tell me what you need →